Supporting Peer Assessment through the Development of a Community of Writers

This paper outlines the value in using peer feedback as an assessment tool in high school writing communities. It explores methods for creating a community of writers, and how developing trust between students strengthens the effectiveness of peer assessment. After having explicit instruction and dialogue about how to give feedback, students engaged in various formative and summative peer sharing and editing opportunities. As indicated in student surveys, perceptions of their own ability to provide quality feedback improved over a four-week period. Also, student comments showed a new appreciation of the usefulness of peer feedback. There are few issues more contentious amongst high school educators than that of peer assessment or peer feedback. (I will be using the two terms interchangeably in this paper, as I believe that peer assessment is a form of feedback.) In conversations with colleagues, there is general agreement that peer assessment, defined as students working in an arrangement “to consider and specify the level, value, or quality of a product or performance of other equal-status learners ” (Topping, 2009, p. 20-21), has potential as a form of formative assessment. Similarly, given the social nature of adolescence, many secondary teachers enjoy capitalizing on learnin